Bolivian government officials said Friday they arrested four more people in connection with Wednesday's failed coup attempt against President Luis Arce, bringing the total detained to 21.

Government Minister Eduardo del Castillo said that among those arrested were military officers, including the driver of an armored vehicle that rammed into the government palace.

The presidential debate was a re-run that featured two candidates with a combined age of 159, but it went especially poorly for one of them, President Joe Biden.

Already fighting voter concerns about his age, Biden, 81, was halting and seemed to lose his train of thought Thursday night, sparking quick concerns among Democrats about the man they hope will keep former President Donald Trump from returning to office. For his part, Trump made repeated false claims and provocative statements. But Trump seemed smoother and more vigorous than Biden, who is only three years older than the Republican ex-president.

Russian shelling killed four people and injured three others including an eight-year-old child in the east Ukrainian town of New York on Friday, regional prosecutors said.

A Russian shell destroyed the "entrance of a 5-story building, killing four civilians aged 43 to 76. A 39-year-old woman and her 8-year-old daughter were injured," the Donetsk region prosecutor's office said. A separate munition strike wounded a 45-year-old man.

French voters are being called to the polls on Sunday for an exceptional moment in their political history: the first round of snap parliamentary elections that could see the country's first far-right government since the World War II Nazi occupation — or no majority emerging at all.

The outcome of the vote, following the second round on July 7 and an exceptionally brief campaign, remains highly uncertain as three major political blocs are competing: the far-right National Rally, President Emmanuel Macron's centrist alliance and the New Popular Front coalition that includes center-left, greens and hard-left forces.

A halting Biden tries to confront Trump at debate but sparks Democratic anxiety about his candidacy

By ZEKE MILLER, MICHELLE L. PRICE, WILL WEISSERT, BILL BARROW and DARLENE SUPERVILLE Associated Press

Voting stations in Iran opened at 08:00 am (0430 GMT) Friday for a snap presidential election, the ministry of interior said, following the death of president Ebrahim Raisi.

"We start the elections" for the country's 14th presidential elections, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said in a televised address.

President Joe Biden and his Republican rival, Donald Trump, will meet for a debate on Thursday that offers an unparalleled opportunity for both candidates to try to reshape the political narrative.

Biden, the Democratic incumbent, gets the chance to reassure voters that, at 81, he's capable of guiding the U.S. through a range of challenges. The 78-year-old Trump, meanwhile, could use the moment to try to move past his felony conviction in New York and convince an audience of tens of millions that he's temperamentally suited to return to the Oval Office.

International experts portrayed a grim picture for war-torn Sudan, warning in a report Thursday that 755,000 are facing famine in the coming months, amid relentless clashes between rival generals.

The latest findings come from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, an initiative first set up in 2004 during the famine in Somalia that now includes more than a dozen U.N. agencies, aid groups, governments and other bodies.

Led by a top general vowing to "restore democracy," armored vehicles rammed the doors of Bolivia's government palace Wednesday in what the president called a coup attempt, then quickly retreated — the latest crisis in the South American country facing a political battle and an economic crisis.

Within hours, the nation of 12 million people saw a rapidly moving scenario in which the troops seemed to take control of the government of President Luis Arce. He vowed to stand firm and named a new army commander, who immediately ordered the troops to stand down.

A candidate in Iran's presidential election withdrew from the race late Wednesday, becoming the first to back out in order for hard-liners to coalesce around a unity candidate in the vote to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi.

Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, 53, dropped his candidacy and urged other candidates to do the same "so that the front of the revolution will be strengthened," the state-run IRNA news agency reported.